I of the North

February 29, 2020March 1, 2020

Know Your Glacial Landforms

Glaciers shaped much of Wisconsin’s landscape, and with it, much of Wisconsin’s natural history. Even the area unshaped by the most recent Ice Age is defined by the lack of glaciation – The Driftless Area.

Glaciers shaped the land both as they formed and grew, but also as they melted and retreated. The glaciers scraped the landscape, removing softer sedimentary rock from the surface. This formed basins which would later fill, forming the Great Lakes and other large lakes in the region. The removed material was deposited hundreds or thousands of miles away when the glaciers finally melted and retreated.

January 19, 2020January 19, 2020

Layering Basics: Wick, Warm, Water, Wind

Everyone has heard that you should dress in layers, but it can often be confusing as to what that exactly means. Which layers? What order? Multiple layers of the same thing, or different things?

December 29, 2019January 1, 2020

What Animals Want

Even my boys can answer that the space in which an animal lives is that animal’s habitat. But what exactly is habitat and what are the qualities in an area that an animal needs to thrive in an area? While the exact answer varies from animal to animal we primarily want to focus on four aspects of habitat:
Food
Water
Cover
Space

November 17, 2019January 1, 2020

Angry One, Loved One

“He was called Sol-Leks, which means the Angry One.”
Call of the Wild, Ch. 2

When I read Call of the Wild as a kid, I imagined a team of dogs pulling me through the Yukon. Rather than Buck, it was the other dogs that came into and out of Buck’s life that stuck with me more. So when I saw that German Shepard puppy bound into the room ten years ago, I wanted to name him Sol-Leks.

October 13, 2019October 11, 2019

Cub Scout Pack Year Plan

This year, I’ve changed roles within our Cub Scout pack, and am now the Cubmaster. Therefore, may normal year plan will instead be about our Pack year plan. Because I still want to think about it, and to be sure that I know each of the rank requirements, I think that I will still write up a (Hypothetical) Bear Den Year Plan at a later time.

Our Pack is shaping up to be smaller and younger than in recent years. We just crossed over a large group of AOL’s and the two classes following that have always been small. However, we have lots of 3rd graders, and I think that the kids are positively responding to the extra responsibilities being placed on them. If anything, I think that this year will be a good building year, setting the pack up for some more activities next summer and year.

September 22, 2019September 23, 2019

Trip Report: Rice Creek State Natural Area

We explored the Rice Creek State Natural Area this past weekend. Wisconsin currently has 687 State Natural Areas. According to the Wisconsin DNR, SNA’s “protect the very best of Wisconsin’s native landscapes” these are typically small, relatively undeveloped areas. Some are within larger State Forests or Parks while others are stand-alone areas, or are owned by conservation groups or private landowners. In addition to preserving these areas for protection of their ecological communities, SNA’s are available to the public for approved scientific research and minimal impact recreation. By keeping all of our travels on the waterways, canoeing was a great low impact option to see this SNA.

August 31, 2019September 2, 2019

Update

All summer I’ve been on hiatus from writing on IOTN. When I started, I had set the minimum goal for myself of posting once a month. I kept with that for over a year and a half, which was pretty cool. While there were plenty of excuses for me to point to since my last post, I think the biggest hurdle for me was the question of how much of myself to put out onto IOTN. I’ll post more about the opposite side of sharing, but the big event that both took up my time blocked my writing was that we bought a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. This is a realization of a dream that I’ve had since I was a youth, and a shared goal that my wife and I have had since before we were married.

April 28, 2019August 28, 2019

Where Do We Go Now? – Part 2 – Mapping Resources

So we’ve found some new places to roam and explore, including the variety of public lands available for recreation in the first part of this Where Do We Go Now? Series. By their very nature, many of these public lands, are presumably undeveloped, or rather only developed by the use that these areas receive. It is certainly possible that some of these places receive few if any visitors all year long.

Needless to say, it is unlikely that there are much in the way of maps made specifically for your exploration of these areas. However, there are many mapping resources out there that you can use to plan, carry out, and document your explorations.

March 24, 2019March 24, 2019

Where Do We Go Now? – Knowing Your Public Lands

I can only assume that Axl Rose was a budding outdoorsist when he whined the words “Where do we go now?” * We have a need and a desire to be outdoors, and we try to appreciate our surroundings as well as our Nature Snacks, but other times a bigger immersion in nature is needed. This provides chance to separate ourselves from our daily lives and experience the restorative properties of nature. But how do you find such a place?

February 24, 2019February 24, 2019

Winter Superpowers

It seems these days that you can’t watch any sort of media without seeing superheroes. Superhero movies fill the box offices and pitch products to us in advertisements. Maybe it is just that I am constantly around my two elementary school age boys. While it can be fun to watch these movies and think about having superpowers. We can gain superpowers of our own in the winter, as long as we are willing to go outside and claim them.